


Barren Bloom

by LolMouse



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Blood, Body Horror, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Pining, Sick Character, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28852131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LolMouse/pseuds/LolMouse
Summary: Jinx keeps coughing up flowers. Raven knows why.
Relationships: Jinx/Raven (DCU), Unrequited Jinx/Raven
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	Barren Bloom

The first time it happened, Raven cornered Jinx on a solo job.

“Catch me if you can, little bird!” Jinx shouted, firing hexes seemingly at random as she danced away, causing objects to fall and break and impede a pursuing Raven.

“Do you have to be this annoying, or is it a hobby?” Raven strained with concentration, ensuring none of the debris and stray objects would strike her or impede her for long.

Jinx was about to reply, looking Raven directly in the eye, when she started coughing. She lost her footing, and her latest spell shot wildly at Raven, forcing her back. Raven saw Jinx cough into her hand, looking at it with horror.

“What’s the matter, did I break your concentration?” Raven taunted.

Jinx looked up, terribly frightened, and sprinted away at full speed into an alley, wiping her hand on her dress.

Raven recovered and turned the corner, but Jinx was gone. She looked around, wondering how she’d disappeared, when a flash of red by her feet caught her attention. She bent down and looked at it.

“...A flower petal,” she mused to herself. It looked wet in the dim light of the alley. It was from no flower she recognized, though it resembled a rose. She picked it up, her eyes widening. It stained her fingertips red, and her demon-born nose recognized the smell.

A bright red flower petal, covered in fresh blood.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Weeks passed before their next encounter with the HIVE, and Raven had long since put the curious petal out of her mind. This time, Robin had caught wind of a smuggling operation down by the docks. When Slade-bots emerged from the shipping crates, they knew it was a trap, and Jinx was heading the operation, expertly commanding a strategy to divide and conquer.

This time, Raven didn’t have to pursue her. She was distracted long enough by the bots for Jinx to come in with a graceful acrobatic kick, knocking her to the ground. Raven recovered just in time to see Jinx standing over her, hex at the ready, about to strike her where she lay, a strange look in her eyes...

And then Jinx coughed. Her spell dissipated as she almost doubled over, hands over her mouth. Raven briefly forgot about the fight around her as she saw a trickle of blood emerge from between the witch’s fingers.

“Jinx? Are you… alright?”

It occurred to her that this was a silly question to ask in that situation, but Jinx’s eyes widened in horror, staring into Raven’s. She was about to say something when another fit overtook her, blood splattering onto the earth now that she wasn’t covering her mouth, and Raven almost gasped.

Deep crimson flower petals streamed from Jinx’s mouth, wet and bloody, and yet light enough to flutter to the ground.

Raven got up and reached out for her, but was interrupted by Starfire seizing the moment to destroy a swathe of now leaderless bots. The tide turned, and Jinx staggered backwards.

“Get away! Keep away from me!” She stretched out her arm, the bloody hand keeping Raven’s sympathy at bay. “I don’t need your help! I don’t need you!”

Before Raven could stop her, Jinx turned and tried to run. Another fit stopped her until Mammoth picked her up, leaving the scene rapidly as the bots covered their escape. Soon, all that was left was to pick up the pieces.

She borrowed specimen bags from Robin, who helped her gently pick up the strange petals.

“What’s wrong with her?” Robin asked. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”

“I may have,” Raven answered. Then she muttered under her breath. “...She said, I don’t need you.”

Robin glanced at her. “Is that significant?”

Raven didn’t answer.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Science did have a name for it, but the one Raven found in her books was Hanahaki Disease.

“It is thought to be a partly magical disease characterized by the victim coughing up flower petals,” she explained to the other Titans in the common room. “Flowers are blooming inside her stomach and lungs and around her heart. This will continue to progress until the victim coughs up whole flowers, and then sometimes stems, until the flowers around her heart bloom fully, leading to death.”

Beast Boy looked ill at the description. Starfire was more curious. “Is there something to be done? Is there a cure?”

Raven paused. Was it right to say? She sighed. “It’s a very... personal and sensitive matter. I’m not sure it’s appropriate to discuss it without her permission, unless we intend to help her. She may not appreciate it.”

She looked around the table. Cyborg was the first to nod his assent. Beast Boy, somehow going more green than usual, also nodded. Starfire gave her assent, looking sad. Finally, Robin closed his eyes and nodded. “It’s the right thing to do. If she can’t fix it herself, we should offer to help her. Even if she’s a criminal.”

Raven forged ahead. “To understand the cure, you have to understand the cause. It spontaneously manifests in a victim who feels strong, unrequited love.”

“Say what?” Cyborg said. “So she’s basically lovesick?”

“Fatally so. There are two known cures. The first is the target of her infatuation returning the affection, thus killing the flower and ending the condition naturally. The second is surgical extraction, but it has a price. It removes the victim’s feelings for the target of their affection, and sometimes even their ability to ever feel love again.”

Starfire gasped in horror. “To never feel love… would some not choose death over this?”

“...Yes. Some do make that choice.” Raven looked away, allowing her hood to hide her face. “It isn’t unheard of for a victim’s target to return the affection, but it is… fraught. Some find it coercive. A relationship like that has been known to end and cause a relapse.” She left it unsaid that many were successful.

Cyborg looked deep in thought. “So we have to talk with her. Present her with her choices. Maybe find out who it is, and how they feel about it.”

Raven hid her face further.

“How do we do that?” Beast Boy asked, finally up to join the conversation. “We can’t just walk into the HIVE and give her a message, right?”

The Titans debated their options, but a plan had just sparked in Raven’s mind.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jinx woke up with a start. There was blood on her pillow, flower petals raining down to her front, spattering her mouth and sleepwear.

“Every… damn night,” she sighed, breathing, then tensing. She prepared a hex and fired it into the darkness of her room.

A deeper darkness answered, swallowing it, revealing a pair of white glowing eyes under a blue hood.

“You!” Jinx vaulted to her feet in an instant, petals raining all about her. “How the hell are you in here? Get out before someone sees- before I hex you!”

Raven calmly reached out and caught one of the drying petals between a thumb and a forefinger, her eyes not leaving Jinx’s gaze for even a moment. Jinx’s gaze didn’t waver either as the petals finally settled around them.

“...Do you know what disease this is?” Raven asked.

Jinx spat. “Fuck you.”

“I know,” Raven replied softly.

Jinx narrowed her eyes. “Do you? And what are you doing about it? Hitting me when I’m weak?”

Raven paused. “You… have not told the academy medics, have you?”

“Like hell,” she said. “And it’s none of your business.”

Raven nodded. She then reached into her cloak, dropping the petal. When it emerged, it held a note instead.

“Written on this piece of paper is a description of your condition, and how to treat it. You don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to believe it. But we will help you if you ask, with no strings attached.”

Raven reached out, slowly but deliberately, holding the paper outstretched. Jinx sneered.

“And I should believe you?

“You have no reason to.”

“And I’m supposed to just trust you?”

“You don’t need to.”

Jinx frowned, then her breath rattled. She coughed. Two petals flew from her mouth, one sticking to her lip, adding to the crimson rain on her face.

Raven stood completely still. After cleaning her lips, frowning at the petal she’d just coughed up, Jinx reached out and took the note. After some hesitation, she unfolded it, taking it in. Her eyes widened, the slit pupils twitching strangely, and she looked up at Raven.

“You- you know- I-”

“You don’t have to say who it is.”

“But do you know who it is?” Jinx seemed to shrink in on herself, small and vulnerable under Raven’s gaze.

Raven thought she knew. “Unless that’s a route we consider, we don’t have to know.” Was this cowardly? She did not know.

Jinx sighed, suppressing another cough. “Okay. Yeah, I… I wasn’t planning to confess at all. I just didn’t expect this.”

Raven suppressed the twinge of emotion she felt, knowing Jinx had never intended to say it. She couldn’t identify it. Relief? Disappointment? “Our offer is open. Instructions on how to contact us are written on that note.”

Jinx nodded and sat down on her bed. She coughed, and several more petals emerged, like a small bouquet on her face. “I- yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

Raven turned around and exited the room. She stopped in the corridor, seeing no one, and listened. Behind the door, she heard Jinx’s anguish, imagining the tears falling.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jinx was nothing if not stubborn. It took another two weeks for her to arrive at the Tower, clutching her chest unconsciously in pain, carrying nothing with her. “Let them assume I’ve been kidnapped or something,” she said by way of explanation. 

That night, in the medical wing, Jinx coughed up her first full flower, one that resembled - but was not quite - a crimson rose, its petals just a little too sharp as if they were fangs, fading to black near the base. Starfire was with her that night, cleaning her up as needed and giving care to a now unresisting Jinx.

“For some reason,” she said the morning after, yawning wide, “the flower reminded me of you, Raven.”

“Did she request the surgery?”

“She did not. I do not know what she is waiting for, but she said it was not yet time.”

Raven said nothing, taking in the blood-and-rose scent that clung to her friend. A scent that would soon fill the medical wing, emanating strongly from the room. Beast Boy could not stand it, and even the other teammates felt its cloying presence. But Raven knew that the smell was strongest for her.

She didn’t allow herself to feel the emotions the scent provoked in her, the deep-seated darkness she allowed no one to see, would never allow anyone to see. The emotions not even she understood, and which she would never tell.

It was Raven’s turn to keep watch the next night. Rather than entering, she stood in the doorway, gazing at the lovesick girl on the bed of bloody roses. Her breathing was labored, and she clutched her blanket and pillow, as if they were her lover.

“I love…” Jinx murmured, crying and coughing into the pillow, her eyes still closed. “Too much. It’s too much. Please…”

Raven blushed and backed off, the pining a little too much for her, the guilt in her rising. She felt responsible, though of course she should not: she did not choose this. And in a real way, neither did Jinx.

She waited for the murmurs to subside, then entered the room, making sure to cause enough noise for Jinx to prepare herself, just in case. She did not. She just looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, her hair limp. Raven walked over to the cleaning bucket, already filled, and started wiping Jinx’s face clean.

“We’ll move you to the other bed soon,” Raven said. “But eventually, you’re going to have to make the decision to have the surgery or not.”

Jinx didn’t look at her. “Is it weird? To have this in me, something I was never going to say, and still not want to let go of it?”

“...Even if you die?”

“Dying feels like a better option.”

“Hesitating makes it more likely that the surgery will go wrong. That you’ll never feel it again for anyone.”

“Maybe that’s also better.”

Raven sighed. “That’s not rational and you know it.”

“Do I?” She looked into Raven’s eyes for the first time, bloodshot, quivering with tears. “You don’t know me. Not really. You could get to know me if you wanted, but you don’t.”

Raven looked back, dipping the sponge back into the bucket. “...Maybe one day. But not while you’re like this.” She brought the sponge back to Jinx’s face.

Jinx took her hand. Raven paused.

“You know, don’t you?” Jinx whispered. “You know who it is.”

Raven paused, then raised her other hand to cover Jinx’s.

“I do.”

Jinx melted into the bed, as if her strings had been cut. “I was never going to tell.”

“...And I could never heal you in that way,” Raven said, suppressing a twinge in her heart - an unwanted thing of no consequence. “Only offer you any respite I could.”

With agonizing slowness, Raven peeled Jinx’s hand off hers and placed it back on the bed.

“It wasn’t always there,” Jinx said, preparing herself for a story. “It wasn’t there during our final exam, taking over the Tower. It came later. We were conducting exercises, creating strategies, and I had to study every scrap of information about you. You were so mysterious. Strange. You aren’t flashy or cocky, you don’t even want the attention. I wanted to know what motivated you. What drives you.”

Raven sighed. No, she didn’t.

“I dove deep. Footage of you eating with your friends. In cafes, ordering tea. In bookstores, sneaking glances at the romance shelves. Yeah, it was stalking,” Jinx said, doing her best to shrug. “Maybe that’s why it became so unhealthy. Unhealthy attraction, unhealthy love. Every time I saw you tuck your hair behind your ear, letting down your hood, avoiding the cameras, savoring quiet and peace… somewhere in there, it bloomed in me.”

“So what did you do?”

“Keep it secret, of course. Don’t want to tell the instructors that I’m in love with the enemy. Don’t want it interfering with the job, or the grades. And I mean… it was just a crush, I thought. Crushes come and go. A lot of them are bad ideas. I’m always a bad idea.”

So am I, Raven thought.

“Then I fought you again and just, gods, that’s really when it flared up hard. Seeing you in person, the intensity you bring, the focus… I was fallen and I couldn’t get up. And yet, I still knew nothing at all about you, not really. So it was pointless. It still is pointless. You’re probably not into girls, even.”

“I don’t know what I am into,” Raven admitted. “I can’t allow myself to.”

Jinx blinked. “Allow?”

“You’re right, Jinx. You don’t know me. No one can know. But I will tell you enough to understand.”

She summoned a nearby chair and sat down, drawing her hood down, looking at Jinx as she spoke.

“I sometimes lose control of my powers. Emotions, strong emotions of any kind, pose an immense risk. When I fight, I’m not conjuring my powers, but holding them back. A momentary lapse is enough to put many people in terrible danger. I… can never allow myself to feel this. For anyone. For everyone’s sake.”

“Well, I-” Jinx swallowed. “If you could… would you? With me?”

“I don’t know.” But something in Raven felt queasy saying this. Something in Jinx’s eyes told her that she’d allowed it to show.

“So… long story short… even if I hadn’t gotten this flower vomit bullshit-” She coughed, disgorging more petals -”Nothing would actually be different between us right now.”

“Correct.”

Jinx smiled. “I’ll have the surgery.”

Raven frowned. “What changed your mind?”

“That maybe one day I’ll get to actually know you.”

“...But it won’t be love.”

“Not this love. Maybe no love at all. That’s fine, I think. Just to know what makes you tick.”

“...Are you… friendzoning me?” Raven actually felt a little offended.

Jinx laughed weakly. “I don’t know, are we going to be friends? Let’s find out.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Cyborg had requested all medical files available from across the world on the disease, and had then performed the operation. It had been a complete success: all blooms were extracted and contained for later study. Jinx had been given a cover story and returned to the HIVE, and the matter was, as far as Raven was concerned, closed.

Five weeks later, Raven sat in a cafe, and a familiar witch took the seat across from her.

“...I’d ask how you knew I was here,” Raven said, sipping her tea. “But the stalking did it.”

“Right in one.” Jinx’s movements were still stiff and labored: open heart surgery was no simple thing. “But I wanted to check in on you, maybe give you an update.”

“Update? Did the surgery not work?”

“No, it did! It’s weird to think that like, I was that into you? I don’t even remember what the feeling was like. The memory of it is just gone.”

“I’m glad. It was killing you, after all.”

Jinx laughed, smiling at her. “Sure, sure. Kinda neat knowing that my enemy doesn’t want me dead, and I guess I didn’t lose my ability to crush on hotties, so I’m good. Actually, that’s one thing I wanted to check up on. I do remember what we talked about.”

“...Which part?”

“The one about being friends. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d still like that. We can meet after hours or on free days and stuff.”

“...Won’t that interfere with your grades?”

“Having life saving surgery makes you reconsider your priorities in life. What do ya say?” She extended her hand.

Raven looked at it for a long second, then slowly took it. “Friends, then.”

“Cool! I’d stop for a longer chat, but I have physical therapy to do. Oh, let me give you my number!”

They exchanged numbers, wondered if their communicators would be compatible, and said their goodbyes, leaving Raven alone with her tea.

She reached into her cloak and withdrew a withering rose, kept alive by her for no reason she could determine, the first rose Jinx had coughed up whole. The petals would eventually dry, keeping their shape for months or even years. She stared at it, wondering why, before putting it away.

She finished her tea and got up, but was caught by a sudden coughing fit. She held her hand to her mouth, then looked at it.

No blood, no flowers.

Why was she vaguely disappointed?

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes its not meant to be.


End file.
